A Night With A Stranger novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Paid in Full

I paid the hospital on a Thursday morning, in person, with my own money.

The wage advance had come through in a cashier's check made out to me.

I had read the amount a dozen times on the bus.

It was eleven thousand, four hundred dollars, exactly.

The billing office was on the ground floor of St. Anne's.

It had a sliding glass pane and a clerk in a lavender cardigan.

She looked up at me over her glasses.

"Name on the account?"

"Keane. It was my mother's account."

She typed for a moment, and her face softened.

"There's a balance of eleven thousand, four hundred. Are you here to set up a payment plan?"

"No." I slid the check under the glass. "I'm here to pay it."

She read the check, and read it again.

"All of it?"

"All of it."

The stamp came down with a heavy thump.

PAID IN FULL, it said, in red, on every page.

She slid the stack of receipts back to me.

I held them against my chest and stood in the corridor for a long time.

There was nobody to tell.

Then I called Evan, and he picked up on the first ring.

"It's done," I said.

For a moment there was only his breath on the line.

"I'm so proud of you," he said. "I'm not allowed to say I paid for a single cent of it, am I?"

"You're not allowed to say anything about it at all."

"I'll say it with my face tonight."

"You'll say it with a toast."

"I have a toast," he said, "written on three index cards."

The engagement dinner was in the Brodsky Grand's ballroom that night.

It was small by Brodsky standards, forty people at six round tables, with candles and white roses.

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